Last Place and Loving It

This ribbon is attached to my handbag to remind me that life is not a race.

I have always been uncomfortable with competition. In our culture, this can be a handicap. I am terrible at games, disinterested in team sports, and humble to a fault about my successes. In a winner-take-all world, ceding the fight can seem downright self-destructive.

The ribbon is an important touchstone in a world that glorifies competition. We’re obsessed with cooking competitions (Top Chef), design competitions (Project Runway) and best friend competitions (I Wanna Be Paris’ New Best Friend). We love bake-offs, spelling bees, and game shows. We rank our entertainment (Billboard), judge our movies (Oscar), and rate the sex appeal of our icons (And the Sexiest Man Alive award goes to George Clooney…again). We wear team colors, paint our faces, scream obscenities at the TV and take the wins and losses of the home team personally. Our election is a competition between Democrats and Republicans. And in the ultimate competition, we wage war.

We all know people who are proudly competitive in life and in business; people who’s primary objective is winning. They feed on the aggression–I guess this is where the “spirit” in “competitive spirit” comes from–that comes with proximity to a worthy opponent.

The older I get the more I question why this is and whether it’s actually constructive–in life and in business.

This weekend I went to a yoga retreat in Ojai, California where the subject of competition came up in reference to the spiritual pursuit. In this context, competitiveness seems ridiculous. And yet, it exists. Yogis get envious of other yogis. We’re told repeatedly of the importance of maintaining a beginner’s mind–even as our practice gets more technically advanced. We look around the room to make sure our skills are on par, even as the teacher reminds us that the practice is internal. One teacher I met this weekend told me that she says to her students: “If yoga was a competitive sport the judges wouldn’t care about the complexity of the poses, they would award marks for breath, concentration, integrity, and one-pointed focus.” This should be a relief to those who can’t manage a handstand or flying crow. And yet yoga like life still seems like a race. How many minutes a day do you meditate? How consistent is your practice? We look for benchmarks, comparing ourselves to others because we’re desperate to know how we’re doing.

The thing is, the Buddhists say (and I am paraphrasing here): Either we’re ALL going to be enlightened or none of us is. The best thing any of us can do is turn our attentions to bringing everyone along on the path. We are told to be happy for others in their success because it’s a success for all of us. There is no “other.” Resenting or denying success for others is just planting karmic seeds for your own (our own) failure. The more you work for others’ enlightenment, the closer you get, we all get, to the prize. We’re advised by the Buddha to become Warrior Saints, fighting for the enlightenment of all beings. Competition on the spiritual path is missing the point, entirely.

This is a common enough idea in life: Love thy enemy…Do unto others…But, what does this mean in the business arena?

The competition gets a lot of play in marketing. We strive for supremacy in our industry even when researchers and analysts are the ones fabricating the field. Does the consumer really see Coors, Budweiser, and Miller as competitive? The more accurate competition for a consumer looking for a high might be between Coors (“My beer of choice”), a glass of red wine, and a joint. You may be the number one beer, but that won’t matter for long if they legalize marijuana or the increasing numbers of health-minded people choose the antioxidants in wine over the bloat of beer. Even when we think we understand the game, we can find that we’re playing on the wrong field altogether.

Of course, the time and energy spent watching the competition can be beneficial if you’re looking for signs of change, opportunities for expansion (or contraction), or inspiration. It gets to be damaging when it causes anxiety, loss of focus, and envy.

Anyone who has ever envied someone knows that the feeling is not a good one…and ultimately, not a very productive one. Does begrudging your classmate the primo job offer get you a better job? Does envying your neighbor their posh vacation home lead to better vacations for you? Does the sting of a competitor’s savvy maneuvers in business create better numbers for you?

Sometimes it feels like the answer is “yes.” You might be motivated to seek a better position yourself or motivate your team to get to market faster with that bold new idea. The cola wars have done wonders for Coke and Pepsi, you say. But when you really look at it there’s the problem with the idea that it is the competition that is creating these positive outcomes. The competitive spirit is actually a distraction in all of these cases. The cola wars are less about one-upmanship than they are about two commodities (sugar water) seeking an identity by positioning themselves against another. Coke is defined as much by what it is as by what it’s not: Pepsi. As for the job; you may push yourself to get a better job, but that can only happen if you have put in the work and nurtured that within you that would be attractive to a top-notch employer. Your team will fail miserably given the order to get to market faster if the systems are not already in place to do so.

Confession: I am not immune. Just this morning I was feeling upbeat and ambitious; the yoga retreat having revitalized my spirit enthusiasm for my work. I was looking forward to getting back to the office on Monday. Then I found a glowing report in the newspaper about the success of a competitive agency. It stung and I put down the paper feeling like I’d lost. After a few minutes of contemplation I realized how silly that was. Ludicrous, in fact. Ignorant of their success, I’d felt elated, with knowledge of it, I felt deflated. Nothing substantive had changed in either of our businesses in the moments before, during, or after the reading of the article. I realized how distracting those emotions might be if I let them influence my vision. I resolved to continue to pursue the ideas that make me a happy business owner, allowing their success to be a sign of health in our industry. We’re not competing for the same customers, there is a potentially unlimited customer base for both of us, not to mention the thousands of other entrepreneurs in NYC, the U.S. and abroad who do what we do. Recognizing the infinite pool of potential work out there helped me understand that I don’t need to compete. I just need to do what I do with singularity of purpose and genuine enthusiasm.

The lesson in yoga, in life, and in business is to turn the focus inward while reaching outward and connecting–not competing–with the greater flow. You watch the competition to stay connected to what’s going on. But you turn inward in order to stay connected to yourself. We’re all getting there or none of us is getting there. You have to be tuned in to both to receive the gifts of a universe that rewards generosity with generosity. The greatest misperception of life and business is that there are limited resources. When we’re operating with the greater good in mind, the resources become unlimited. This fact alone should render competition meaningless.

Is competition a good or bad thing? It’s neither. It’s an illusion. Your competition could disappear tomorrow. It happens every day. A new competitor could come from nowhere to change the game altogether. It happens all the time. Figure out what you “think” competition is doing for your business and find another way to accomplish it–whether that’s motivation, innovation, or a reason for being. Your business will be more stable, more honest, and more successful as a result.

Celebrating “last place” is about choosing not to compete and thriving anyway.